Saturday, July 07, 2012
PCUSA and divestment
Prof. Bainbridge weighs in:
Once again, the Presbyterian Church (USA) is considering divesting from certain companies that do business with the Israeli government. As I explained the last time the church went down this road, it's a bad, anti-semitic idea:Not to mention they have holdings in China, which has a rather dubious human rights record by any calculation.
Let's start with a basic question: Will the PC(USA)'s decision "work"? In other words, do divestment campaigns tend to achieve their proponent's goals? The clear answer from the empirical literature is "no."
